this faith in which they found allegiance
by Cerberusia
Summary: Albus/Scorpius, unrequited Harry/Draco - Happily ever after is what you make it. Al and Scorpius' relationship from Harry's POV, having fallen in love with Draco but been politely rejected many years ago.


It's January 2000, just after New Year's. A time of new beginnings. A little over a year and a half ago, Harry Potter defeated Voldemort and ended his reign of terror. The Wizarding World is well on the way to rebuilding itself. For the victors, life is good.

But there are still smaller victories to be won, and tonight the battleground is a nice restaurant, quiet and discreet, where no-one will make a fuss about having the Boy-Who-Lived and a former Death Eater having a meal together.

"Draco," says Harry, standing - he'll always be Draco to him now. Draco, clad in black robes of severe cut, swings elegantly into his seat with apparently inborn grace. Harry, who has occasionally walked into bollards even while wearing his glasses, spares a moment to envy him. There's not really anything else to envy at the moment: Harry can't claim to be unaffected by the war and its aftermath, but it's obvious that Draco and his family are still picking themselves out of the rubble.

"Potter," says Draco, eyes sharp despite the slight grey cast to his skin. He's holding together well, but the stress of dealing with the Ministry's anti-Death Eater measures is getting to him. At least he managed to keep out of Azkaban - Harry suspects that he himself may have had something to do with that. He certainly helped in Lucius's case: the man's not necessarily reformed, but he's too old and too tired and loves his family too much to get involved with the Death Eaters again.

"Harry, please," he says, "if I'm going to call you Draco - and I am, by the way - I want you to call me Harry." A year and a half ago, Draco would have sneered, but now he merely lifts a brow and nods. Has he matured, or just broken down? Harry lets his gaze linger on the straight line of his aristocratic nose as he wonders how to find out.

"This will probably sound stupid," he begins, and Draco says,

"So do many things you say, Pott- Harry." It's sharp, but not as caustic as it might have been. He's older (what a difference eighteen months make!) and tired, but the war didn't break Draco any more than it did Harry. Battered them, yes, and the bruises may never entirely fade, but they both survived to be functional human beings. Unlike some.

"It's just that - I'd like to talk to you. Not about anything in particular, just. I want to get to know you," he blurts out. Both eyebrows go up this time as Draco gives him a politely incredulous look, but since no cutting retort comes, he assumes that Draco accepts this tentative and frankly rather clumsy overture.

They eat, and talk of inconsequential things. Harry wants to ask about how he's coping, how he's really coping, but he knows that Draco is still proud and doesn't want to upset him or make the mood uncomfortable, so he focusses on trying to make him laugh instead. He's reserved at first, but sure enough, a couple of tales of his own mishaps in dealing with bureaucracy gets some quiet chuckles. Harry exaggerates a little, but he doesn't mind playing the fool a little to cheer Draco up. He looks like he needs it.

Everything goes swimmingly, and Harry even manages to finangle it so that he pays a little more than his share of the bill. After all, he invited Draco out. If Draco notices, he doesn't say anything, for which Harry is pathetically grateful. He knows well that the worst part of disadvantage is the pity.

A couple of weeks later, they go out again. And again a few weeks after that. Soon, it turns weekly. They're both busy, but they make time. Harry learns what makes Draco laugh and Draco, although he still takes pleasure in riling Harry, is careful not to go too far. Their truce has evolved into friendship. Ron and Hermione think he's a bit odd, but they've largely come round.

As far as Harry is concerned, this is a wonderful prelude to them actually _going out_. He can't flirt directly, never really got the knack, but this, he thinks, is pretty close - lunches, dinners, long conversations. They're often silly, to take their minds off the stress of their everyday lives, but sometimes they're serious, and when Harry says that he still doesn't know why Draco accepted his invitation, Draco looks thoughtful and says after a moment,_ It was the right time_, which isn't a helpful answer at all really, but warmth blossoms in Harry's chest anyway. Harry mentions casually that he like blokes too: Draco doesn't seem upset or even shocked. Apparently wizards don't have the same hangups about it that Muggles do.

Harry gets into the habit of inviting Draco back to his flat after dinners together. The first few times Draco politely declines, but after a few offers he accepts, hand slipping inside his sleeve to touch his wand. In the kitchen, Harry pours them drinks and hands one to Draco who lounges on the living room sofa while Harry takes the chair. By this point they are both twenty-one, legal adults everywhere in the world, but something about offering his guest alcohol makes Harry feel strangely grown-up. Later, they both sit on the sofa, and sometimes Harry will brush Draco's hand with his, press their shoulders or thighs together, or rest a hand on his arm, and gradually Draco stops flinching and starts to casually touch Harry in return. They learn to trust one another.

A year passes in this way. They get comfortable with each other, accept or work around each other's flaws and irritating habits. Harry lets himself watch Draco's mouth as he talks, and fancies that Draco does the same to him. At the half-year mark, watching Draco's hands trace hypnotic patterns in the air, he thinks he might be in love. At eight months, Draco smiling at him from the sofa, eyes gleaming in the flickering firelight, and he knows it.

Then, of course, it all goes wrong.

February, he invites Draco up. He's been in Harry's flat before, though Harry has never been invited back to the Manor, which doesn't surprise him, but this time when Draco holds out his glass to be refilled Harry takes it gently from those long, elegant fingers to put it on the coffee table along with his own, takes Draco's chin in his hand and kisses him.

Draco doesn't shove him away, but when he draws back, Harry sees cold fury in the twist of his mouth.

"Was that what you were after? Making a conquest of your old enemy? Well I must say you've gone to a lot of trouble for just one fuck."

"What? No," Harry protests. This isn't how it was supposed to go. "You - that's not it." Desperate to make him understand, he kisses him again, trying to put his feelings behind it. The tension goes out of Draco's shoulders, but he still doesn't respond; when Harry lets go for the second time, Draco's eyes are a touch sad.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't do that. You surprised me, I'm sorry." The apology startles Harry, but Draco goes on: "It's...flattering, I suppose."

And Harry, because he is impulsive in the best but also the worst ways, blurts out,

"I might be in love with you." He takes a moment to consider, then admits, "I'm almost sure I am."

Draco takes in a sharp breath, and looks torn. After a moment, he says, quietly: "Like I said, it's flattering. But I'm not interested."

Harry takes a moment to process, but when he does he feels slightly ill.

"I see," he says, woodenly. "I'm sorry."

Draco shrugs, getting off the sofa.

"There's nothing to be sorry for. You took a chance. Isn't that what you're always doing?" He puts on his heavy cloak. "I'd best go now. Firecall me in a week or so."

Harry sees him to the door, feeling awkward and out of place in his own flat, not to mention stupid. Draco leaves briskly, and the click of the door behind him sounds terribly final. That's that, then.

It's January 2000, and outside the snow falls on London. Harry sits back down on the sofa and stares into the fireplace for an hour. He is not ashamed to cry.

* * *

Seventeen years later, Harry meets Draco's eyes across a crowded train platform. A brief nod, and Draco turns back to his wife and child. This is how they are now: courteous, but distant, settled within their own family units. Harry never did make that firecall, and Draco never pressed the issue. As if Draco didn't know that Harry would have shared his life, shared all he had with him, because in Harry's world that's what love means. That - God help him - he still would.

Draco touches his wife's hand, and his wedding ring glints in the cold September sunlight. Harry grits his teeth and turns away.

In Al's second year, they have Scorpius over for a few days over Christmas. Everyone likes him - a quiet, very polite boy with a quick sense of humour. Very clever too - a Ravenclaw, right down to the glasses. He wears his hair shaggy and loose, which Harry appreciates because that and the glasses are the only things differentiating him from his father at that age. Well, that and the smile.

Al, meanwhile, was sorted into Slytherin, and after a couple of weeks of panicked letters home he settled in and seems to have established himself firmly at the top of the pecking order. He and Scorpius are both completely uncaring about House divisions and are freely affectionate with each other, squishing up in the same chair to read a book and taking the other by the wrist to lead them somewhere. Sometimes, Harry wonders just how their sons have ended up so similar to them in looks, but so different in personality.

He doesn't wonder what might have happened if he and Draco had been friends at that age. There's no point.

Four years after that glance at the train station, Al comes home for the Christmas holidays clutching Scorpius' hand. If Harry took off his glasses, they'd look like - but no. They're different people. He won't do that to them.

But it's impossible not to.

Harry looks at them, curled up together on the sofa, and thinks: _that could have been us_. It couldn't have been, wouldn't have been, of course - Draco wasn't interested and that's all there is to it. They don't even _talk_ nowadays.

But still he looks at them, and his heart _yearns_.

As a teenager, he got used to not having his fancies requited. Cho, in retrospect Cedric and Bill, a few others - they were fond of him, but not interested like that. Ginny was, but then Ginny has always been different. He broke up with her just after school - just for a short while, he said, to get his head in order. She understood - it must be hard, to have fulfilled your destiny at seventeen.

Then, walking down Knockturn Alley, he caught sight of a long, lean figure, dressed in black. Draco strode down the street with his chin level, his back straight: confident. And Harry's stomach turned over not in fear, but in - recognition. Anticipation. Desire. The sudden, overwhelming knowledge that right here, right now, he had a choice. There was no right or wrong answer, but he _knew_, on an instinctual level, it was important. This could change his life.

He went back to Diagon Alley, to the Leaky Cauldron, sat down at a table and composed the invitation there and then. And Draco accepted: _it was the right time_.

But, as it turned out, it was never the right time for them and never can be. Instead, it is their children who sit out on the patio in summer and hold hands. It's not right for him to live vicariously through them, load his baggage on their young shoulders, but it is terribly tempting.

Harry is not sorry that he married Ginny: he loves her, always will. She is steady but fiery, quick and strong. They understand one another with the ease of long partnership. Their relationship comes naturally.

But sometimes he wonders: what would it have been like? Is this the relationship, the partner he would have chosen in the end? He loves Ginny, but his heart has never beat louder at her name, her voice, her smile.

They say that after a few years of marriage, the passion goes. In Harry's there was never any to begin with. But there is deep, solid love, and with that they sustain themselves.

As a Gryffindor, Harry supposes that he should have more compunctions about eavesdropping. But then, the hat would have been very happy to put him in Slytherin. So, when Scorpius is staying with them in the summer between their fifth and sixth years, and there comes a day when Ginny has taken James and Lily out on a shopping expedition, and Harry sees Albus and Scorpius in Albus' bedroom talking fairly seriously, he slips into the shadow of a cabinet at the end of the hallway and uses an almost undetectable charm to listen in.

"-doesn't mind," Scorpius is saying. "He says he's given up on all that rivalry crap."

"...I can't believe that your father actually _said_ 'rivalry crap'." Albus sounds amused.

"I've told you, he swears more freely around me than your parents do around you. But stop trying to change the subject: he'd love to meet you properly, as would Maman."

A sigh. "If Mum and Dad agree. I believe you, but they might not."

Harry wants to say that he gave up his side of the feud a very long time ago, but it's probably not prudent to reveal that he's been eavesdropping: teenagers, he knows, are strongly protective of their privacy.

"It'll be fine," Scorpius soothes, and there is a long silence. Harry doesn't need to see them to know what they're doing, and unbidden the image springs to mind: a gentle kiss, with Scorpius slightly stooped to reach Albus, in front of the nightstand which stands in front of a tall window. It could be the poster for a Muggle film.

It's terribly romantic, and Harry feel momentarily sentimental about it all. But then the glasses are on Albus' nose instead of Scorpius', and Harry has to blink the image away.

He gives permission, of course. Ginny doesn't mind either, surprising Albus, who Harry knows has always thought she didn't quite approve of his friendship with Scorpius.

(Harry has always known better: Ginny, a professional Quidditch player turned coach in a family of stay-at-home mothers with large broods, understands well that we are not our parents).

In the end, they all go to the Manor: Draco invites them for afternoon tea, and they can't very well refuse. Harry resigns himself to an afternoon of strained small talk and restrained longing.

They take it in the garden, the adults all around one table while the boys are off chasing the peacocks. They arrange themselves so around the table it goes Harry-Ginny-Draco-Astoria, ensuring that Harry is not right next to Draco which is probably for the best. It does, however, put him in the uncomfortable position of directly facing him instead, so whenever he looks up from his (beautifully patterned) teacup he's staring right into Draco's eyes, which have been fixed on him right from the beginning. It's disconcerting for a multitude of reasons, and Harry distracts himself by considering if it would be impolite to cast a Cooling Charm on his tea. Probably.

Draco takes a drink of his own tea, and when he releases his cup his lips glisten. Harry has a brief fantasy of leaning across the table and licking them. Instead, he busies himself with taking a sip of his own tea, which is finally cool enough to drink. Earl Grey, naturally.

Between them, Ginny and Astoria are making unexpectedly pleasant conversation: they both have a keen interest in Quidditch. This surprises Harry, who wouldn't have assumed the elegant, rather stylish Astoria to be much of a sportswoman, but it transpires that she keeps and rides Hippogriffs competitively - Harry's eyes flick to Draco at this disclosure, and the wry twist to Draco's lips tells him that they are remembering the same incident.

They lock gazes, briefly, before Harry quickly breaks eye contact to watch the boys, who are apparently obvious to their parents. They've given up on chasing the peacocks and are now slumped against one another on the lawn, chatting. Al's hand is on Scorpius' knee and Scorpius is idly pulling up bits of grass. They look like teenagers in love; the afternoon sunlight sets them glowing. From the back, they also look like - Harry forces himself not to turn away. They are not their parents. They will never be Harry and Draco. He stares at them and wills himself to see them as they are. Scorpius is sweeter than his father, both in face and nature - his full mouth lets drop 'please' with far more ease than do the thin lips of his father. For his part, Albus has freckles and perfect vision - this time round it's Malfoy who wears thin-rimmed spectacles.

But it's not enough. They're not perfect copies, but the differences just aren't different enough. Harry turns back to the adults and his tea, and tries to return his attention to the conversation that they're having, Draco having joined in.

The boys come running over.

"So?" says Scorpius, pale flush along his cheekbones. "Have both parties vetted each other to their mutual satisfaction, or are there going to be wands at dawn?" Beside him, Albus loosely curls his hand around Scorpius'.

And that's when it hits Harry: the fundamental difference. Across the table, Draco shares a glance with Astoria, brushes his fingers against her wrist. They both smile.

They're _happy_. They are perfectly, radiantly content. Over the years, he has learned to give the appearance of being in blissful love with Ginny, but they do it without artifice. Scorpius, with his hand tucked into Albus', smiles and squeezes. Draco would never do that, not in public, not even now. But Scorpius - Scorpius has not been through a war which nearly crushed him and his family. The boys have grown up without the looming threat of Voldemort, not having to look over their shoulders at every turn. They are not their fathers, haunted men who fought a war on opposite sides and still don't talk about it.

For all their resemblance they are, Harry finally understands, quite separate people. He has not given up, cannot give up his torch for Draco - he has carried it too long now, held it too deep inside, and letting go of love is something that he has never mastered - but at least he can stop projecting his repressed desires onto their sons.

They leave an hour later, full of tea and biscuits, leaving Albus to make friends with the Hippogriffs under Astoria's expert supervision. They, along with Scorpius, make for the paddocks, and Draco's eyes linger on his wife's retreating figure for a moment before he turns to escort Harry and Ginny to the Apparition point in the grounds where they first arrived - a gazebo of white marble with clematis climbing up the supports.

Harry never thought he'd be here again, after that March more than two decades ago. He wouldn't have been surprised if Draco had disowned the place himself. But instead, it seems that he is overlaying the bad memories with good. He's faced his demons: Draco Malfoy is no longer a coward.

They make their goodbyes; Draco inclines his head gravely but there's warmth in the corner of his polite smile. Harry smiles back and keeps eye contact with Draco as he Disapparates.

It's January 2025. Albus and Scorpius are in the living room, revising for their NEWT mocks. Ginny is curled up on the sofa with Lily and James, chatting about how to improve the performance of the Gryffindor Beaters, who are apparently abysmal (and it makes Harry, raised in a conservative Muggle household, smile to see how his wife ended up even more interested in Quidditch than him).

He always gets a little melancholy around this time: twenty-five years on with a wife and three children to occupy his attention, Draco doesn't cross his mind so often any more. But it's the anniversary, and as usual Harry thinks, _what if_. What if it had all gone right first time? But as the years pass, he starts to fill that in with: they wouldn't have their children. Maybe other children - the Wizarding World has ways - but not _these_ children, who he can no longer imagine life without. Maybe they wouldn't even be together any more.

He can't stop loving Draco, the Draco he knew - maybe still knows. But gradually, almost without noticing it, he has moved on. He's not in love with Ginny, but he loves her, and that's enough. And there are the children. There are always their children.

They say Christmas is the time for sentimentality, not a few days after New Year's. But as Harry watches them, silver-blond and ink-black, he permits himself some anyway. Albus casually lays his hand over Scorpius', as he so often does, and they lie side by side on the rug, bodies pressed comfortably together. Faces cast in orange shadows by the fire, there is intimacy in the press of their shoulders.

It's January 2025, and outside winter has frosted the lawn to make it sparkle. Twenty-five years to the day, and Harry Potter, surrounded by his family, is finally content.


End file.
